Selah to Hagah

Church Marketing Sucks posted a story about a struggle that happenned in a church due to baseball caps that were worn during church services.

Having read the actual article from Christianity Today Library, this sounds a strong resonance in my heart:

“I will admit that I did not like seeing caps in church. But you are our leader, and I was willing to follow your call. You had the right to talk to the boys alone, because you are their pastor, like a coach has the right to talk to his ball players. You have made the call, and we need to stand by it. I agree with what you have done, I respect you for taking a stand. I’m with you.”

However, apparently some CMS commenters chose to only stop at discussing the attire issue per se. But again, as Kevin has said, “Sometimes something as simple as a hat isn’t so simple.”

Still I think, the most important is to choose to do God’s will. Unfortunately (or fortunately - depend on how you think of it ), we don’t always know the 100% perfect cut of God’s will ourselves. That’s why He puts mentors in our life, I believe.

Read the actual article: War of the Baseball Caps

Last Monday I was given the turn to share in YABS (Young Adults Bethany Singapore) prayer meeting. Below is the note I prepared before the session and tidied a little afterwards.

One of the struggles I overcame recently was gaming. Video games. It’s been 25+ days since the last time I touched my PlayStation 2 console. “Yeah, right. 25 days.” Well, we’ll have to see longer, of course. In any case, it was a great deal, no, huge deal to me. Why? Let me share a little background about my former hobby.

When I was 8, my dad bought an Apple ][ PC . Of course, being a primary 2 schooler, I only used it to play games. Two years later we had our IBM PC/XT compatible. More gaming was done, in intensity and number. Not long after that, we had a Nintendo Famicom. Well, I’d never really liked video game consoles too much, so PC/XT was still my primary gaming machine. In this machine I played my first serious game (game requires more than 2 hours each time played). After that, not many progress happenned, i.e. my dad stopped buying new toys for some reason. So while my friends got their PC/AT 286, I was stuck with my PC/XT. Still, games back then supported both platforms although more and more left PC/XT. Until one day we had a 386. Wow. This machine was simply the one that built my addiction and passion for gaming. This and the later Pentium 100 - I was simply sucked into gaming. Literally hours was burned during those time including one time I missed one mid-term exam due to a soccer game. Then for some reason, I got stuck again with this Pentium while the rest of my friends played with Pentium II and 3D graphic cards. But it didn’t reduce my passion for gaming, it’s just piled up until one day I touched multiplayer-networked gaming, I spent a lot of my after-hours in office playing Counter Strike and Unreal Tournament. My wife could share some of her thoughts back then when I used to fetch her from office - sometimes grudgingly

My latest addiction was a game series called Winning Eleven, another soccer game, started about a year before our wedding, ended just recently. This game was so captivating that I never got bored playing. It’s simply the only serious game I played for the last 2-3 years. Again, my wife would definitely be able to share her thoughts about this This was my “game of the century, decade, whatever”. I literally burned most of my evenings for hours in playing more than 50 total league seasons (each season consists of 50+ matches, each match takes 12-15 actual minutes). I can roughly average it to about 2 hours per day, continuously. Mind you, I was (and am) married. I played when I was in good mood, I played when I felt ‘blue’, I played anytime, anywhere, with anyone.

So, it was a big deal when all of a sudden the urge to play was not there anymore. After YABS retreat last May, God dealt with me for a lot of things, including this area of weakness of mine. I thank God for this.

At first, I thought I was going to endure for a couple of weeks and then lost it back to square one. After all, it’s my passion, and I have a not-so-good track record in conquering bad habits. And this “passion” things, without my knowledge, had been rooted deep in my thought. If I can recall correctly, it was my former boss who coined this term inside my head. Back then, my boss noticed that I was not too ‘happy’ doing my daily jobs (as a web developer) compared to when I talked about gaming scene. “You should pursue your passion. If gaming is your passion, you should go for it.” In the sentence itself, it doesn’t have anything wrong. It’s just when thrown to my addictiveness, it started to root and bore its fruit greater than I thought. It’s not that I disregard my former boss, on the contrary I myself still hold my utmost respect for my him, a lot of good things learned from him although he may have a different belief.

But still an impact it was to me. I was never really be able to let go gaming, even though I know it often did me harm rather than good. “It’s my passion.” I can’t give up my passion. Christ is my passion, I can’t give up Christ for whatever sake. And so it was always in my mind for sometime.

Fast forward to recently, before the retreat, I was in the car with my cellgroup leader, Bambang, driving me and my wife home. He’s quite a busy man, being posted in a fairly high position in a well known MNC, it’s not that often he could attend the cellgroup and share a car with me. One of the very short topics we chatted about that night was my “passion” for gaming. One thing that came out of his mouth was “Tsk, tsk, GT.. being this ‘old’ and you still like to play game! ” That’s all. Nothing religious or spiritual about that. All were said in chatty and joking mood. I simply grinned and replied “Yeaah.. what to do, it’s my passion after all.” And that night and the following nights I still continued my league season in my PlayStation.

Now, in retrospect, one thing that comes up into my mind is these 2 sentences from these 2 different guys. The first ‘planted’ a risky thought in my head, much without my awareness: “It’s my passion. You must maintain your passion.” The second one, also without much of my consciousness, pulled the trigger to take away the thought: “It’s nothing. You can live perfectly well without it.” This is another thing I’d like to share about: submission, authority, and annointing.

I am by no means a bible scholar, there are a lot of books, articles, studies that have already covered these topics very well. In here, I’m just sharing this as a typical working guy, doing his daily secular business while at the same time also pursue excellence to know and love God more.

I have always been a strong believer that in order to achieve a certain degree of success, one must be in a submission and authority. Although Paul described it more clearly in Ephesians 5-6 using real life examples, somehow I experienced and applied it more in the spiritual contexts.

When I first became a Christian, I immediately submitted myself under a mentorship (under an ‘authority’ if you could call that is) of my spiritual brother who led me in my sinner’s prayer - which was also happened to be my best buddy in highschool. He’s not even a year older than me, in fact just he’s just about 7 months older. In everything else we talk quite in the same level (we’re in the same age after all). Spiritually speaking, however, I will ‘ensure’ that I position him as my mentor and me as his ‘mentoree’. That’s a state or position I consciously choose. All this happenned quite naturally in me. After all, I also saw the same thing was applied in his life to his mentor, and his mentor to his, and so on.

On the other hand, I also saw several other ‘incidents’ where ones tried to ’step out’ of their areas of submission. I’m here far from any intention to form any judgement or anything else, but to simply put it, they seemed to be ‘out of radar’ from the whole corporative vision and movement in general. Of course there are processes and many other things which are out of the scope from what I’m sharing here.

Back to topic, continue to my years in Singapore. God rekindled the fire in my heart to serve and pursue Him ‘again’, I was put to join Bukit Merah cellgroup under Bro. Chandra’s stewardship. Again, naturally he and his wife became my and Siska’s mentors. A lot of priceless lessons had blessed us in various aspects through our act of submission. The same thing also happenned in YABS, Bro. Erwin immediately become our mentor, also quite naturally. A little bit different experience was when we’re told to join our homogenous cellgroups and thus were to be separated from our current ones. A that time, I and Siska were not too close to Bambang and Helen. But out of submission, we did our first cellgroup sessions with only the three of us (Helen was away) and indeed it felt a bit ‘awkward’. But we fervently continue to meet. Today, we’re minimum 10 persons each meeting and has splitted into new cellgroups.

Along the way, I recognized the importance of how I need to be submissive, even when I barely known how or who my appointed leader was, especially when I learned that among his busy schedule, he allocates quite some time in his mornings to pray. Although not said, I know for sure I and Siska are in his intercessory list. This alone worths reciprocal prayer from us and in fact, not much to my awareness, I began to revere him more and eventually I consciously placed him as a mentor where I’m in the area of submission to his stewardship.

I believe, when I choose the act to be in a submission under a specific authority/mentorship, God’s annointing really flows smoothly from top to bottom. That’s how a simple-chatty sentence like “this old and yet still play game” has a great impact that God could use to transform me. I mean, it could be a different story if I didn’t really choose to place him above me as mentor and place myself under submission; or, if it was from my other friend whom I didn’t consciously choose to submit under his ‘authority’.

So, what I can conclude tonight are:

• We need to be under a submission of some authority/mentorship
• We need to choose to be under that submission
• We need to act and choose (consciously and continuously) to place our mentors above us spiritually
• When we choose to do that, God’s annointing will flow smoothly from top to bottom
• We need to pray for our mentors, especially so that they will do the same

Just read a post from a milis I joined. I paste the contents below, unedited in Bahasa (when I have time, will translate to English):

” Abah, kembalikan tangan Ita !! “

Apabila kamu menjadi marah , janganlah kamu berbuat dosa , janganlah matahari terbenam sebelum padam amarahmu dan janganlah beri kesempatan pada iblis. (Efesus 4 : 26 - 27)

Sepasang suami isteri seperti layaknya pasangan muda lainnya di kota kota besar , meninggalkan anak anak diasuh oleh pembantu rumah tangga semasa keluar bekerja.
Anak tunggal pasangan ini , perempuan berusia tiga setengah tahun , sendirian dirumah , dia kerap dibiarkan pembantunya yang sibuk bekerja , bermain diluar tetapi pintu pagar tetap di kunci. Bermainlah dia berayun ayun diatas buaian yang dibelikan bapanya , ataupun memetik bunga raya , bunga kertas dan lain lain dihalaman rumah.

Suatu hari dia melihat sebatang paku karat , dia mencoret semen tempat mobil bapanya diparkirkan , tetapi karena lantainya terbuat dari marmer , coretan tidak kelihatan , dicobanya pada mobil baru bapanya.

Ya …… , karena mobil itu berwarna gelap , coretannya tampak jelas , apalagi kanak kanak itupun membuat coretannya sesuai dengan kreativitasnya , hari itu bapa dan ibunya bermotor ketempat kerja karena macet ada perayaan Thaipusan. Setelah penuh dengan coretan pada sisi sebelah kanan mobil , dia beralih kesisi sebelah kiri , dibuatnya gambar bapa dan ibunya , gambarnya sendiri , gambar ayam , kucing dan lain sebagainya menurut imaginasinya , kejadian ini berlangsung tanpa disadari oleh pembantu rumah tangga nya.

Pulang petang itu , terkejut pasangan itu melihat kereta yang baru setahun dibelinya dengan bayaran angsuran. Si Bapa yang belum lagi masuk kerumah ini pun langsung berteriak , ” Kerjaan siapa ini ? ” Pembantu rumah yang tersentak dengan teriakan itu berlari keluar , dia juga beristighfar , mukanya merah padam ketakutan melihat wajah bengis tuannya.
Sekali lagi diajukan pertanyaan keras kepadanya , dia terus mengatakan . ” Tak tahu ……! ”
” Kamu dirumah sepanjang hari , apa saja yang kau lakukan ? ” hardik si isteri lagi.
Si anak yang mendengar suara orang tuanya , tiba-tiba berlari keluar dari kamarnya , dengan penuh manja dia berkata , ” Ita yang membuat itu abah …. cantik kan ! ” katanya sambil memeluk bapanya ingin bermanja seperti biasanya.

Si bapa yang kehilangan kesabarannya mengambil sebatang ranting kecil dari pohon bunga raya di depannya , terus dipukulkannya berkali kali ke telapak tangan si anak , anak yang tidak mengerti apa-apa terlonglong-longlong kesakitan sekaligus ketakutan , puas memukul telapak tangan , si bapa memukul pula belakang tangan anaknya , si ibu cuma berdiam , seolah merestui dan merasa puas dengan hukuman yang dikena kan.

Pembantu rumah tangga terbengong , tidak tahu harus berbuat apa. Si bapa cukup rakus memukul mukul tangan kanan dan tangan kiri si anak.
Setelah si bapa masuk diikuti isterinya , pembantu rumah tangga itu menggendong anak kecil itu , membawanya ke kamar , dilihatnya telapak tangan dan belakang tangan si anak luka-luka dan berdarah.
Pembantu rumah tangga itu memandikan si anak , sambil menyiram air sambil dia ikuit menangis , anak kecil itu menjerit jerit menahan kepedihan saat luka lukanya terkena air , si pembantu kemudian menidurkan anak itu , si bapa sengaja membiar kan anak itu tidur bersama dengan pembantu.

Keesokan harinya kedua belah tangan si anak bengkak , si pembantu melaporkan. ” Oleskan obat saja ! ” jawab tuannya.
Pulang dari kerja , dia tidak memperhatikan anak kecil itu yang menghabiskan waktu dikamar pembantu , si bapa konon mau mengajar anaknya.

Tiga hari berlalu , si bapa tidak pernah menjenguk anaknya sementara si ibu juga begitu , tetapi setiap hari bertanya kepada si pembantu. ” Ita demam …. ” jawab pembantunya ringkas.
” Kasih minum panadol. ” jawab si ibu. Sebelum si ibu masuk kamar tidur , dia menjenguk kamar pembantunya , saat dilihat anaknya dalam pelukan pembantu , dia menutup lagi pintu kamar pembantunya.

Masuk hari keempat , pembantu memberitahukan tuannya bahwa suhu badan Ita terlalu panas.
” Sore nanti kita bawa ke klinik , pukul 5.00 siap ” kata majikannya itu.
Sampai saatnya si anak sudah lemah dibawa ke klinik , dokter mengarahkan ia dirujuk ke hospital karena keadaannya serius.
Setelah seminggu di rawat inap , dokter memanggil bapa dan ibu si anak.
” Tidak ada pilihan ………” katanya yang mengusulkan agar kedua tangan anak itu dipotong karena gangren yang terjadi sudah terlalu parah.
” Ia sudah bernanah , demi menyelamatkan nyawanya kedua tangannya perlu dipotong dari siku kebawah.” kata dokter.

Si bapa dan si ibu bagaikan terkena halilintar mendengar kata kata itu , terasa dunia berhenti berputar , tapi apa yang dapat dikatakan. Si ibu meraung merangkul si anak , si bapa terketar- ketar menandatangani surat persetujuan pembedahan.

Keluar dari bilik pembedahan , selepas obat bius yang suntikkan habis , si anak menangis kesakitan. Diapun terheran-heran melihat kedua tangannya berbalut kain kasa putih , ditatapnya muka bapa dan ibunya, kemudian kewajah pembantunya, dia mengerutkan dahi melihat mereka semua menangis.

Dalam siksaan menahan sakit , si anak bersuara dalam linangan air mata “Abah ……mama …… Ita tidak akan melakukannya lagi , Ita tak mau abah pukul , Ita tak mau jahat , Ita sayang abah …. sayang mama.” katanya berulang kali membuat ibunya gagal menahan rasa sedihnya.

“Ita juga sayang kak Narti ……..” katanya memandang wajah pembantu rumah tangga-nya, sekaligus membuat gadis dari Surabaya itu meraung histeris.
“Abah ….. kembalikan tangan Ita, untuk apa di ambil ….. Ita janji tak akan mengulangi nya lagi ! Bagaimana caranya Ita makan nanti ? Bagaimana Ita mau bermain nanti ?
Ita janji tidak akan mencoret coret mobil lagi,” katanya berulang ulang.

Serasa copot jantung si ibu mendengar kata kata anaknya , meraung-raunglah dia sekuat hati namun takdir yang sudah terjadi, tiada manusia dapat menahannya.

Renungkanlah :
Lihatlah anakmu, jangan biarkan dia bermain sendiri, juga jangan biarkan engkau bersibuk ria sendiri, peluklah selagi dia ada, sediakan waktu yang cukup buat anakmu…sebelum engkau menyesal

It strucks deep right into my heart. While I know it’s only a fiction, what a powerful message it brings. At least to me.

Of the scale 1-10, I may be at 6-8 when concerning about patient. But the ugly thing is, I could at times score 8-10 in explosive anger if I did lose the calmness. And unfortunately, my closest and beloved people were usually the ones who witnessed (and experienced) it.

I have yet to find wiser wisdom than the verses quoted by the poster regarding anger management:

“In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. (Eph 4:26-28)

It’s been a shocking but gentle-strong reminder to me. Will remember Ita’s story when rage wants to show off. Thanks for the post, Efod.

As an aside note, somehow I was reminded about the experience of some of my close friends when the wives need to give up their 2+ months fetus because there’s no life signal. One even lost their 2 weeks old baby after birth. The husbands got ‘angry’ to God.

I know it’s not easy to have a good sense of empathy for others’ misfortunate experiences. But there were times where I couldn’t really ‘understand’ the feeling of losing a fetus or even a just born baby, especially to be ‘angry’ to God? Although I’m a husband myself, and one day will be a father as well, it was still incomprehensible for me to think being ‘angry’ to God due to this.

Until I read the above story - much clearer now, can really understand. (Well, at least it proves that it’s not because I’m prideful (not ever get angry to God), but merely lacking of empathic experience).

On the other way around, I can also apprehend better God’s love toward His children. It’s way too hard, too upsetting, too sad to lose even only 1 child to eternal death.

That’s why you can’t never be too patient. About anything.